Evolve: Identifying when current design guidelines contribute to disproportionate collapse of reinforced concrete building structures

Evolve has been organised in three work packages (WP), each directly related to one of the specific objectives of Evolve.

WP1 – Calibrating computational modelling strategy

For the derived conclusions from analyses performed in Evolve to be reliable and meaningful, it is crucial to ensure that the predictions from simulations performed using the planned computational modelling strategy are in good agreement with observed structural responses from experimental tests. Since the project requires simulating building collapses, the Applied Element Method (AEM) will be used for planned simulation tasks due to its computational efficiency and ability to accurately represent all phases of a collapse including element separation, contact, and collision. Therefore, this WP is mainly concerned with the selection of suitable experimental studies and with the calibration of specific input parameters required when employing the AEM. Besides allowing the definition of a validated computational modelling strategy that is required to achieve the overall aim of Evolve, this WP will also produce results that, by themselves, will be useful for the scientific community. Such results include: i) a compilation of existing progressive collapse experiments categorised according to relevant phenomena captured during the tests, and ii) guidelines to configure input parameters of AEM models for the accurate predictive simulation of the collapse of RC structures.

WP2 – Simulating failures in realistic building designs

WP2 involves elaborating the case studies and performing the simulations whose results will provide the basis for the performance assessment framework to be defined in WP3. This WP will employ the simulation strategy calibrated in WP1 and will ultimately establish the specific scope of the performance assessment framework through the nature of the defined case studies. Moreover, the analyses to be performed in WP2 will enable developing a fundamental understanding of phenomena involved in collapse propagation. Although, such phenomena has been studied conceptually by previous researchers, the precise nature, magnitude, and dynamic evolution of forces and straining actions enabling their occurrence is still not well understood.

WP3 – Defining performance-assessment framework

WP3 involves synthetising and generalising all relevant conclusions that could be drawn from the analyses performed in previous WPs in order to define practical heuristic methods and guidelines that can be used to define limits of connectivity within a structural system for preventing disproportionate collapse after large initial failures. These heuristic methods and guidelines will be encompassed into a general performance-assessment framework. Although the development of this framework will mostly rely on the results achieved in WP2, any relevant conclusion that can be drawn from the calibration exercises performed in WP1 will also be considered.